"He had breasts. Not large ones. Small breasts, like a flat-chested woman temporarily swollen with milk. Then with his red beard, his face of a sunburnt forty-five-year-old man, stern-visaged, long-nosed, thin-lipped, he began to nurse. The baby stopped wailing and sucked greedily." -Marge Piercy, from "Woman on the Edge of Time" (p. 134)

27 November 2006

AND NOW ECUADOR

Rafael Correa appears to have won Ecuador's election: Counterpunch's Nikolas Kozloff offers analysis; Bloomberg panics; the BBC calls him a "populist." The Kozloff article is the most useful; Correa faces the general opposition between capital and nature.

Even though Correa may distribute some of the benefits of capitalism to Ecuador's indigenous population (the group that doubtless elected him), his power within the capitalist system will depend upon the ability of Ecuador's oil to satisfy the capitalist system's 85-million-barrels-a-day thirst. This could pose problems for the Ecuadorian ecology.

It must be remembered, then, that the main reason to support the "Chavista" revolt against neoliberalism in South America is that, within "Chavista" countries, empowering movements can take place that may eventually develop ecosocialist tendencies. Even in South America, the revolt against neoliberalism is still in the stage that Gramsci called the "war of position," the struggle against cultural hegemony within capitalism.